Chapter One - Good Morning Mitakihara
"Good morning! Greetings all. This is Mitakihara radio, and your host, once again, is me, your neighbor, Daichi Harada. To start off this wonderful morning, here is the #1 hit single, You Are My Woman…"
The radio blared from an open window in the hospital, and Charlotte would have understood the lyrics to the song playing if she hadn't rejected her humanity.
As a witch, all she heard through her big red floppy ears was garbled noise, among the rest of the babble coming from the city around her. Endless, irritating noise that she wished would just all vanish into oblivion. Her barrier forming inside the hospital was a relief in that regard, as it blocked out some of the cacophony that scratched at the inside of her skull.
She wanted to die, and had thought she was going to. Instead, fate dealt her a cruel hand and she was consigned to an extended existence of despair. An existence as the very type of beast she hunted when she was a magical girl, now plagued by a desire to destroy the cruel world around her and rend it to nothing. To devour it apart and reduce the suffering she has to face.
A suffering that came to an end when she noticed the cheese box that had drifted into her barrier, landing on a comically oversized doughnut that sprouted forth from what was once a clean tiled floor. A parachute was attached to it, and she surmised it must have blown in from an open window right as her barrier was in the midst of spreading.
Had Charlotte still been human, she would have found it peculiar that a box of cheese would happen to float into her witch's barrier right before it was erected. As a witch, she didn't question that odd coincidence of fate. She just wanted the cheese.
A large, black serpentine beast rose forth from her bowels and through her mouth. Her second body hidden inside her tiny, mouse-like frame.
Her second face eyed the box hungrily, its large tongue sagging outside of its toothed maw, wet with saliva. She lunged forward and reached out to lap up the box with her tongue, bringing it into her waiting mouth.
When she closed her mouth, she realized the mistake she has made. Her beady eyes widened, and so did that of her second body.
Whatever was in the box, it was definitely not cheese. It tasted like a rock, a sharp one that stabbed her tongue and sent a jolt through her being.
Then the world began to spin as her insides caught on fire. Her witch body began to unravel at the seams, her familiars, tiny black beings, vanishing into bits along with their barrier. Her vision clouded with darkness as she fell into a state of abrupt unconsciousness.
When Charlotte blinked her eyes open a few moments later, she wasn't Charlotte anymore. By some miracle of the universe, she was back to being Nagisa Momoe.
The, dazed twelve year old had no inkling of what happened, but there was one thing she was certain of; she had turned back into a human being, by some greater power that she could not yet explain.
The hospital room where she was consigned to returned back to normal. She felt the heavy sheets of her bed, and heard the beeping of the machines around her that was monitoring her condition. She heard the familiar blipping of the heart monitor, indicating she had a beating heart again.
Her eyes fell upon the one thing in the room that was different from what she remembered of the room before turning into Charlotte. A white cylindrical canister, the so-called "box of cheese", was placed neatly on the bedside table.
With her humanity back and her head unclouded, she could read the labels on the canister.
SPEEDWAGON FOUNDATION, DO NOT OPEN. METEOR FRGMT. NO. 5
The saliva dripping across the container's lid, along with its chewed up and shredded form, were indications that what Nagisa experienced was real and not just one long, very fever dream. It all had really happened, despite how surreal it all seemed, from her becoming a magical girl and then becoming a witch, and then turning back into a regular human again.
Or was she? Was she for certain a regular human and not something else with only a human shape?
She needed to know. She needed to know what was inside that container to have done what Kyubey had said was impossible, and what else it could have done to her.
Her eye caught sight of something dark and sharp that had poked through the container's side. A rock of some sort, or, as the label suggests, a piece of some meteorite.
Nagisa reached her arm out forward, but the container was out of her reach. She was practically tied to her bed by the way the sheets were folded on her body, and she was too weak to move or reach any further. She struggled again, with nothing on her mind but to grab the box and learn of its secrets before any of the staff would come and take it away. That's the one thing adults liked to do the most, to take things away.
She poured her willpower into the next attempt, and then something happened that caused her eyes to go wide with fear.
A black arm, thick in muscle and covered in polka dots, shot out of her own arm and grabbed the container. As if reacting to her thoughts like a phantom limb she never knew she had, it brought the container over and vanished once its task was complete, leaving a frightened little girl thinking she was possessed by a demon.
Perhaps she wasn't entirely back to normal after all.
Elsewhere
The dream was different this time. There was no monster floating in the sky. The ring of floating, broken buildings was still there, but there wasn't an upside down cackling monster at the center of it.
Instead, it was a small, human-shaped silhouette sitting atop a large, yellow object that was several times bigger.
Madoka Kaname's eyes widened as she realized what that object was.
A steam roller. It was an entire goddamn steam roller, and it was speeding right towards her at an impossible speed, hurtling through the skies like a meteorite of metal, internet memes and death.
"What the-" Madoka said.
"ROAD ROLLER DA!" came a banshee's cry.
Madoka's thoughts cut off as the steam roller collided right into her, causing her to snap awake. She sat up in cold sweat, nearly knocking one of many stuffed animals on her bed over.
She placed a palm on her forehead and took a deep breath.
Her last dream had been pretty bizarre, involving a girl, Homura Akemi, she met the next day, almost like a precognition of sorts. If this dream also had precognitive qualities, then she needed to keep clear of any construction sites. Who knows when a steam roller would come flying out to squash her like in the dream?
A silly thought for sure, but anything was possible these past few days. Learning that an upperclassmen was a magical girl, along with the shocker that magical girls were real and not exclusive to the realms of anime and manga, made her a believer in almost anything. Heck, she'd believe in vampires, rock people and flying rods at this point.
The alarm clock besides her bed beeped. She looked at the numbers displayed, and her heart sank.
She was going to be late for school.
"Madoka? Are you awake yet? School is going to start soon!"
It was her father who called out. Panic seized her and she quickly jumped off the bed to go through her morning routine.
"Coming dad!"
-MADOKA'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: SOUL GEM IS NOT CLASH-
*cue Breakdown playing*
The journey to school was wrought with danger, more so than expected.
Madoka Kaname had underestimated how much the dream rattled her, until she found herself too fearful to go the usual route to school because there was a visible construction site nearby. She didn't bother to see if there was a steamroller or not, for she quickly chose another route to school.
So addled was her mind that morning that she wasn't looking ahead when she bumped straight into a person.
Madoka lost her balance and fell backward, her arms spinning in the air comically, her schoolbag wrenched from her grasp.
Or so she thought, until she blinked open her eyes a second later and found that her school bag was still in her hand, and she wasn't falling over at all. She was standing perfectly fine.
Eh? How can that be! I was sure I was falling- Madoka thought.
"Oh no! I'm so sorry," The woman she bumped into said, who, judging from the white medical coat she had on, probably worked at the hospital.
She was a foreigner, and a pretty one at that. With flawless fair skin, and beautiful purple eyes sparkling beneath her under rim glasses, the woman looked like she belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. Her curly, cropped purple hair caught the rays of the morning sun, and the tight turtleneck and pencil skirt she wore beneath her coat accentuated her slim, fit figure and shapely legs.
Madoka didn't know if it was because of European culture or fashion sense, but the woman definitely showed her love for gear shaped designs as evidenced by her clothing. Everything from the earrings dangling from her ears to the brooches dotting the collar of her coat, to the patterns across her dark leggings were shaped like miniature cogs. There were even gear patterns on her yellow umbrella, which she had propped open to protect her from the heat of the sunlight.
"I was in a hurry to get to work, and I didn't see where I was going! Sorry!" The woman said, her Japanese as impeccable as her looks. She offered a nervous smile that made her seem like a meganekko anime character brought to life.
"Oh no worries," Madoka smiled back, and did a quick bow in return. "It was my fault for not seeing where I was going. I was in a hurry too-"
She lifted her head to see that the woman was long gone, bolting across the street, the coffee cup in her hand at high risk of nearly spinning over.
"What an odd woman," Madoka said. Then she glanced at her own watch, then ran off at the same speed as the woman, realizing quickly that being tardy was almost guaranteed at this point.
Eventually, after running for what felt like an entire marathon, she stopped to catch her breath. Coincidentally, she had stopped right where she usually met her friends. Only they weren't there now. How could she expect them to be, when school was going to start in only a minute or so?
But apparently one of her friends didn't get the message.
A hand suddenly landed on her shoulder, nearly startling her out of her wits. She blurted out a scream.
"Geez Madoka, relax. It's just me."
Madoka whirled around, and saw a girl with short blue hair and equally blue eyes, with a music note themed hairpin and the same school uniform as her.
"Sayaka...you nearly gave me a heart attack!"
Sayaka Miki chuckled. "Sorry about that. I didn't expect to scare you that badly."
Madoka let out a sigh, her heart steadily reduced its pounding so it no longer sounded like a jackhammer. "What are you doing out here? Isn't school about to begin?"
"About that," Sayaka smiled. Then fished out a spherical, black object with a pointed tip growing out of its surface from her school bag. An intricate design was etched into the center of its body.
Madoka's eyes went wide at the sight of the object.
Only a few days ago, she and Sayaka met Mami Tomoe, a magical girl who introduced them to a world of magic and witches. As a result, Madoka recognized the object in her friend's grasp. It was a grief seed as Mami explained. Every witch drops a grief seed upon defeat and serves as fuel for a magical girl's power.
Which meant the notion of Sayaka, who was most certainly not a magical girl, getting her hands on one was just begging for questions to be raised. A lot of them.
"Sayaka...where did you get...that?" Madoka said.
"Well…" Sayaka smirked. Her expression became sly.
"Y-You didn't steal it from Mami did you?"
"Wha-no! Of course not!"
"You made a wish with Kyubey-san then?"
"No!" Sayaka waved her hands frantically. "Not yet anyway. Though I'm thinking about it."
"Then how did you get that!" Madoka pointed to the seed. "Only magical girls could get their hands on those things."
Sayaka fell silent, grinning as she put the grief seed back into her school bag. She then brought Madoka close and whispered. "You're not gonna believe this, but there's a whole house filled with them."
"An...entire house of grief seeds?" Madoka gasped. Based on what little she knew from Mami, then it meant a house entirely filled with slain witches. The thought of an entire nest of those frightening monsters sent a shiver down her spine.
"Sayaka that's dangerous! If there's so many seeds, then who knows how many witches are inside it!"
"That's the even weirder part. The house was abandoned. There was nothing in it."
Madoka raised an eyebrow. "No...no witches or anything?"
"No. There weren't even a mouse inside. And none of that trippy witch's barrier stuff sprang around me."
"Well, I'm relieved you are safe," Madoka said. "But we should tell Mami about this."
"She didn't show up to school today," Sayaka shrugged. "Guess she was sick."
Then she brought her voice down to a whisper again. "Besides...don't you want to check it out?"
"Sayaka...we're late for school," Madoka said. She didn't run all that way for nothing. And she wasn't about to visit an abandoned house filled with grief seeds and god knows what else. "I don't think it's a good idea to go there by ourselves...not without Mami with us...or Homura."
"The transfer student?" Sayaka rolled her eyes. "As if we need her help."
"Sayaka…" Madoka took on a doting tone, like the voice of a parent trying to dissuade a child from doing something stupid. And she had a feeling Sayaka was going to something particularly stupid this morning.
"Fine...fine," Sayaka said, hands raised up in defeat. "You go to school. I'll be checking out the house."
She ran off before Madoka could say a word.
"Sayaka!" Madoka said. It was too late.
"I'm going to regret this," Madoka sighed. Then went off after her friend to keep her from getting into trouble. "Hey Sayaka! Wait up!"
There was one thing Sayaka failed to mention. The place looked downright haunted. Madoka didn't know if it was actually haunted of course, but she wouldn't be surprised if it was.
The house in question was a three story Victorian-style dwelling nudged into an obscure part of Mitakihara, away from the hustle and bustle of the main streets. And it was too old to be possibly standing and should have either been demolished ages ago or be part of a ghost sightings tour to scam tourists out of their money. The wooden facade was worn, some boards were outright gone, and all the windows were either caked in grime, broken, or boarded up. Shingles were peeled from the roofs, plucked like the feathers of a chicken and exposing the bare wood underneath.
"Sayaka...how did you find this place?" Madoka said.
"I overheard a rumor from someone at school just as I was about to leave, about a haunted house near the outskirts of town," Sayaka replied. "Then I checked this place out, and saw a magical girl leaving the front door."
"A magical girl?" Madoka perked up. "Was she Mami?"
"No...someone else. And she brought out a huge bag of things with her. These things." Sayaka raised the grief seed. "She dropped it as she left, and I snuck in to take a look. There's dozens of these in the house."
"We...shouldn't really be here." Madoka said.
Her words went unheeded as Sayaka began her way up the steps which creaked with each step she took.
"Sayaka, you shouldn't-" Madoka suddenly saw something in one of the few windows that was still relatively clean. A pale, flickering shape that vanished the moment she blinked.
She had a bad feeling about whatever was in the house. The possibility there was a witch inside was high, or it could even have been something worse. With Mami around, she might've felt safe, what with her magic powers and ability to sprout rifles seemingly out of nothing and all. But with only her and Sayaka, who lacked any sort of supernatural powers as a means of defense, they were easy pickings to the things that may be lurking in the shadows of the house.
"Sayaka we should get out of here," Madoka turned back, to see that Sayaka was gone and the door was slightly ajar.
Then a scream came from inside. A scream she recognized as being Sayaka's.
"Sayaka!" Madoka yelled. Her mind raced with thoughts, her pulse pounded. She began to panic, not knowing what she should do, or what she could do.
She had Mami's number after they met, but it may already be too late to call her, especially if Sayaka's guess was right and that she was sick. Who knows how long it would take her to arrive...
Madoka worked up courage and let out a deep breath. Even without magical powers, she'd be an awful friend if she didn't do anything. Then she ran in after her friend and into the inside of the house.
The interior of the place was less dirty than expected, with fewer cobwebs than she thought there would be. There were old, dusty furniture to go along with the empty picture frames and a long dead fireplace in what remained of the living room.
The emptiness and silence gave her the creeps. She needed to find Sayaka and get out quickly, before the residents of this place get to them, though she feared they may have already gotten her friend.
She quickly shook that thought out of her head and made her way deep into the house.
"Sayaka…?" Madoka kept her voice as low as possible.
The floorboards squeaked beneath her feet as she made her way to a hall that connected to the living room. One of the doors was agape, and she peeked inside.
And saw a spot of blue hair with a music shaped hairpin tied to it.
Sayaka! Madoka opened the door as carefully as she can, then inched her way inside.
Sayaka was doubled over, trembling with her back turned, face away. Her knees were held close to her chest, the rest of the room cloaked in shadow. She didn't say a word.
Now, Madoka was not an avid watcher of horror movies for she just wasn't into that kind of stuff, but she could recognize a textbook example of a horror movie scenario when she saw one. She wasn't even sure if it was Sayaka, as ridiculous as it sounded. It could be a demon or a ghost pretending it was her friend, tricking into getting her closer.
Or maybe...just maybe...it was a witch. Can witches camouflage themselves? Shapeshift into friends to lure in their prey? She didn't know, but there was only one thing to do at this point, no matter how much fear was wrapped around her heart.
She did her best to calm her addled nerves, and inched her way into the room.
"Sayaka…?"
Sayaka said nothing, her face still turned away. The atmosphere became thick with tension, accentuated by the stale air. The dread became almost corporeal, and her mind began to imagine a series of manga sound effects floating across the room.
ゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴゴ
"Sayaka…?" Madoka called out again, and again no response. She reached out with a shaking hand.
"Sayaka…?"
Sayaka yelled, and Madoka's heart nearly stopped entirely.
"Wow! Look at all these!" Sayaka turned around, a beaming grin on her face, her eyes sparkling with wonder. She was the Sayaka she knew and loved, and not some horror movie monster that she thought she had become. But damn if she didn't stifle the desire to smack her across the face.
The day was simply not going well for Madoka. The nightmare about steamrollers, getting nearly scared to death by her friend twice, and now playing hookie inside a dilapidated house.
"Hey Madoka, you okay?" Sayaka said, finally taking notice of her. "You look as pale as a sheet."
Yeah, no thanks to you! Madoka thought. She swiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. "I'm fine. Let's just get out of here!"
"Hold on take a look at this…" Sayaka said, nodding towards the floorboards near her. Madoka walked closer and saw that an entire portion of the floor had been hollowed out, the floorboards around the hollow area designed to be easily removable.
And beneath those floorboards was a compartment that contained more grief seeds than she could count. Sayaka told her there were dozens of them. The compartment looked like it contained hundreds.
"OH MY GOD!" Madoka shouted.
"Hey quiet! You'll wake the whole place up," Sayaka said. "If there is anyone to wake up of course."
"Sayaka...what are all these grief seeds doing here?" Madoka said.
"Beats me. Thankfully none of the witches are around. Otherwise we'd see them by now." Sayaka smiled. Madoka did not share her friend's comfort at the thought. Something had taken all those grief seeds, and she didn't want to be around whatever that could hunt witches so easily when it came back.
"Hey...you know what I think?" Sayaka said.
"That we should get out of here?" Madoka quickly quipped back.
"No. I think this is some sort of「magical girl bank」."
Madoka raised an eyebrow. "A magical girl...bank?"
"Yeah. A repository of some sorts for grief seeds. I don't even think Mami could get so many in such a short time. There were way more than I remembered there being! Maybe a group of magical girls dump all their extra seeds together and give it out to those that need it."
"Well whatever it is, this place gives me the creeps, lets-" Madoka caught sight of something that stood out from the rest of the grief seeds. She pointed to it. "Hey Sayaka, what is that?"
Sayaka followed her gaze. "Huh? I don't know."
Cluttered among the various grief seeds was a large white, cylinder shaped container. There were big bold letters written across its side, with a logo resembling a spoked wheel right above the words.
"Speedwagon Foundation...do not open…" Sayaka read off the labels.
"It says it is number three." Madoka said. "Could there be more of them?"
"I don't know. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it isn't important." Sayaka proceeded to pocket some of the seeds.
"Sayaka! What are you doing!"
Sayaka awkwardly grinned. "I figure I could repay the kindness Mami showed us by giving her some of these. I mean there's so much of it, the owners wouldn't miss if I take a few right?"
"Sayaka...that's still stealing."
Sayaka pouted. "Fine fine, I'll put these back."
Madoka nodded in approval. Sayaka was many things but she'd be damned if she was going to let her friend down the slippery slope to a life of crime.
She would have left then and there and took Sayaka with her, if the white container wasn't beckoning to her. Almost begging for her attention.
Without thinking, she moved to the container and picked it up from the pile of seeds.
"I thought you said that was stealing," Sayaka joked. Madoka ignored her and studied the container in her hands. There was nothing special about it from the outset, but she could not shake the feeling that whatever was inside it held something dangerous.
"I'm just checking it out," Madoka finally replied. Just as she felt a sharp prickling across her finger.
"Ouch!" She dropped the box.
"H-Hey! Are you alright!"
"Yeah...I just prickled myself," Madoka glanced down at her scratch across her finger, and the blood trickling down from it. She then turned her attention to the container she dropped. There had been a small hole chipped into its side that she failed to notice, which now had a pointed piece of rock jutting out of it. She had probably inadvertently bounced the rock inside the container, causing its sharp point to fall right into the hole right as her finger was hovering over it.
She just hoped she wasn't infected with anything.
"Hey, you're right we should get out of here," Sayaka said. 'We need to get you to the school nurse."
Madoka blinked. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. The pain in her finger was gone, and so was the wound. "Actually I'm fine."
"Huh?" Sayaka gawked.
"The cut. It was bleeding a second ago, but now it was healed."
"That's crazy," Sayaka said.
"As crazy as a haunted house filled with grief seeds?"
"Oh please, the haunted part is just a rumor. For all we know, the magical girls running this place only started that to keep people out of this place."
Madoka wished she shared her friend's enthusiasm, but she saw something that caused her to turn even more pale than a sheet. Her knuckles became white, and her eyes went wide with the only genuine terror she felt today. She slowly stepped back.
"Hey Madoka, what's the matter with you?" Sayaka said. She had yet to notice that the rumors were not rumors, and that a ghost had really appeared behind her.
"Sayaka...stay quiet and come this way." Madoka said, her voice kept to a low whisper.
Sayaka looked confused, completely oblivious to the figure that had walked right out of the wall, standing behind her.
It was a head taller than Sayaka, and had a beige and grey body resembling a cybernetic mannequin It had a halo hovering over its head like an angel's, attached to a wire jutting out of the nape of its neck, and a single wing came out of its right shoulder, made of metal rather than feathers. Its head was round like a ball with a wide mouth and a single tuft of wiry grey hair in between its yellow, striated eyes, which seemed to have been made from the glass of a car's headlights. A series of pipes sprouted forth from the edge of its muscles and calves, linking to its back.
Calling it an angel or a ghost was nonsense. Madoka knew what the creature really was.
A witch was in the house. One that didn't feel the need to make a barrier.
It opened its wide mouth to speak, in a distorted voice that was equal parts mechanical and human.
"「Quiet Riot」...will「punish」all 「thieves」."
Then, to Madoka's horror, one of its hands reached for Sayaka.
TO BE CONTINUED
Author's Note: Here's to new beginnings